It Was One Of The Strangest Sights I Had Ever Seen…

..In the outdoors. Even though the incident occurred about two decades ago…there has not been a fall hunting season that has gone by since without me thinking about this strange happening one late October morning.

At the time I was in northern Minnesota duck hunting with my good friends Mitch and Mark. Indeed, it was the perfect morning for being a waterfowler. We had loaded Mark’s canoe up with our gear and the three of us paddled back to a killer location on a point of a small lake. A light breeze to our back, heavily overcast clouds, near freezing temps…the sort of conditions duck hunters from the north country dream of experiencing.

Just like every other morning we tossed out our decoys to form a small spread that surely would entice any waterfowl within eyesight to make a critical mistake in their judgment. We stowed the canoe in the reeds and the three of us hunters used our waders to find some solid ground in which to take cover preparing for the inevitable action.

It was the sort of morning where the chorus of gunfire quickly erupted right at legal shooting time. Yes, we never expected to be on the lake alone…but on this particular morning we could easily determine that perhaps a dozen or more hunting blinds were being occupied within a short earshot of our location.

As we patiently waited observing the distant sky and listening for whistling wings, the event that continues to leave an indelible impression in my mind soon occurred.

Seemingly out of nowhere and with the sun still just peeking over the horizon, a bright yellow canoe appeared to our right and went blasting directly through the middle of our decoy spread. “Hip…hip…hip…hip…hip” With each paddle stroke the two men, who were not dressed as hunters, disrupted the serene mood of the morning. Problem was…it was such an odd sight all three of us could not believe our eyes.

Honestly, I know at least a minute went by and nobody uttered a word. Each of us was fighting the disbelief and silently trying to come to a simple explanation of what our mind was not allowing any of us to process.

I finally asked the question…”did either of you guys just see a bright yellow canoe with two guys in it go through our decoys at about 50 yards?” You can imagine my relief when they both answered…YES!! I responded…why didn’t you guys say something immediately after it happened? Their reply…because neither could believe their eyes and they both thought it was just their mind playing tricks on them.

To this very day I don’t know what those guys in the bright yellow canoe were doing. I suspect they were on the water being disruptive to the hunters because perhaps they opposed what we were doing. I mean, their actions were deliberate and purposeful by going through our decoy spread. I really don’t have a better explanation.

Now, certainly in the years since this incident, Minnesota, like many other states, has initiated various hunter harassment laws that would make it illegal to perform disruptive acts such as this one. I’ve had other hunters tell me that had this incident occurred to them there most definitely would have been some sort of confrontation that ensued.

But on this particular morning we quickly just chalked it up as being one of the strangest sights each of us had ever witnessed during our time spent outdoors. Oh, sure, we could have been upset about the incident…but if the goal of the yellow canoeists was to ruin our day they failed miserably in that attempt.

You see, we later learned how these punks tried to be disruptive to all the hunters on the lake. Instead, what happened was their antics stirred the ducks up to such a degree we ended up with one of the best mornings waterfowl hunting ever. For at least an hour after paddling past us the ducks were agitated, off the water and flying from every direction.

So, let me hear about it. What strange occurrences have you personally witnessed while out hunting or even fishing, for that matter. Care to share it with me? Don’t worry…I’ll believe you!

Oh Yeah, I wish I had a picture of that yellow canoe to share for this story…but I simply don’t. Remember, I was still suffering from a momentary lapse of being completely dumbfounded when the incident took place.